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‘It Has to Be Useful for the Pupils, of Course’ – Teachers as Intermediaries in Design with Children

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 259))

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Abstract

We explore ways by which teachers act as intermediaries in information technology (IT) design with children through analyzing three of our design projects conducted with schoolchildren and their teachers. In our projects the teachers acted as informants and evaluators, but not as IT design partners, albeit they had a lot of decision-making power as steering-group members of the projects. The teachers offered valuable understanding of children through their general knowledge about child development and their knowledge of their class. Teachers also acted as valuable facilitators in the design process, enhancing children’s participation in the design process. They also acted as advocates of children and their learning. They considered children’s learning goals and fit with the curriculum and developed their own skills and knowledge to serve children’s learning. Occasionally, they also acted as advocates of children’s interests more generally; however, not in the sense of critical tradition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the teachers, pupils, Master’s level students and LUKUINTO programme representatives for participating in this study. Especially we thank Tonja Molin-Juustila for her contribution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INTERACT Research Unit, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Netta Iivari & Marianne Kinnula

Authors
  1. Netta Iivari
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  2. Marianne Kinnula
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Correspondence to Netta Iivari .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and IT, Hogskolan Vast, Uddevalla, Sweden

    Ulrika Lundh Snis

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Iivari, N., Kinnula, M. (2016). ‘It Has to Be Useful for the Pupils, of Course’ – Teachers as Intermediaries in Design with Children. In: Lundh Snis, U. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2016. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 259. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43597-8_2

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